


Cute without an E

by Niham87



Series: Uneasy lies the head that wears the Crown [2]
Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Anal Play, Angst and Porn, Cannon Divergence - 3x04 Paper Porcupine, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gun Shenanigans, Hate Sex, Hurt, POV Rio (Good Girls), Pining, Power Dynamics, Rough Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:13:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26804185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niham87/pseuds/Niham87
Summary: The corner of his mouth curls like a wound-up fist as soon as he spots it. The red rubber band. Her trademark.The more he scrutinizes the fake ten and Mick's knife grates steadily through the goons’ bonds, the more it seems like she has settled another conquering token where it doesn’t belong, his business. It bears too close and personal, kindred to the bullet wound in his chest.“So who made your money?”He already knows the answer but he wants to hear it. That's how you vanquish your fears, right? You give them a name. Say it out loud. Hope they go away.
Relationships: Beth Boland/Rio
Series: Uneasy lies the head that wears the Crown [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1953274
Comments: 26
Kudos: 198





	Cute without an E

**Author's Note:**

> Beth and Rio at their best messy and dramatic selves. 
> 
> I wrote this with Allan Rayman - Gun playing in the background. There's a whole [Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/68AtTOejVLQauWE7lDibUG?si=I5KwXyAWS5O-gLo6tMHa4A), if interested.
> 
> Enjoy.
> 
> Thank you, Hilda, for revising the shit out of it.

The corner of his mouth curls like a wound-up fist as soon as he spots it. The red rubber band. Her trademark. 

The more he scrutinizes the fake ten and Mick's knife grates steadily through the goons’ bonds, the more it seems like she has settled another conquering token where it doesn’t belong, his business. It bears too close and personal, kindred to the bullet wound in his chest.

“So who made your money?”

He already knows the answer but he wants to hear it. That's how you vanquish your fears, right? You give them a name. Say it out loud. Hope they go away.

"It's these three bitches, aight?" The meathead says without qualms. So much for a goon. "The ringleader, your milfy type. Blonde, huge fudging tiddies… soft like a fresh cinnamon bun, makes you wanna help her coat the cream… if you know what I mean."

His jaw locks so hard he overhears the snap of teeth inside his skull. He rolls his neck in hopes of shaking the tension, it just flares it down to his hands. The stack of tens crumples beneath his fingers instead of the big ol’ meathead’s skull. 

Mick’s sudden and loud exhaling is enough to dial down the simmering of his ire. They lock eyes above the man’s tufted scalp and Mick waggles his head as if he knows exactly what’s about to go down. Like he knows him better than he knows himself. That money is the last thing he’s banking on. 

Now that it’s off of his chest and out in the open, it’s too far gone to catch and stash it. He's instantly haunted by their last encounter. Craving her like a pyromaniac covets fire. It can't be coincidence, this buffoon just happens and wanders into his business, branding her stamp, right under his nose? He can’t ignore it, even if he wanted to. He still needs to hear it. Ensure it isn’t just residual strain.

"Name," he husks, mouth parched. “I need her name.”

"Beth. Elizabeth Boland.”

There it is. Three little words. Three taut burns.

“We call her ‘The Chef' but she could be a fuckin’ witch. She cooks that shiz out the back of a store, with an apron and a Vitamix."

Rio palms the man’s shoulder, smile slicing, sharper than a Japanese blade, “What store?” 

“I… It’s some weird-ass name. I-I don’t remember.”

“No?” he asks sweetly, eyebrows raised up to his hairline. “That’s okay,” he chuckles, seizing the man’s sweaty nape. The dampness there makes the contact clap like the forecast for thunder. “I can help you with that.”

The man’s stomach concaves around his fist, his wide chest lugs with the vacuum effect. 

“Aight, aight... chill!” he draws for air, “Paper Porcupine, off the I-696, Southfield.”

“Good man! What else?” 

“T-that’s all I know! I just wash it! I swear!” he stumbles as Rio’s fingertips dig into the meaty muscle, “I ain’t ask deets. That bitch has a mouth on her.” 

Oh, he knows that mouth alright. Knows all the ridges of those lips better than he knows the palm of his hand. Knows she tastes like heaven and burns like hell. Knows her spit is distilled like Absinthe, complex and highly inebriating. That if you let her, she’ll melt you like a sugar cube, either at her rim or whim. 

He gives whatever-his-name-is a warning, and another beating, and lets him go on his merry way, away from her. He goes home. He needs to think, to clear his thoughts but it ain’t home. It’s a shitty hole he doesn’t even dare to bring Marcus to. She managed to ruin that too. But due where it is due, he never took the best dad award home anyway. 

He maintains a closeted shrine for her here. They were gewgaws at first. Turned into mementos after he’d fuck her, hot and nasty in that seedy bathroom. It’s the dirty little obsession we’d tucked away after three bullets. 

He loops the newest, a red rubber band, around the waxed bottleneck of the last - the bourbon. Puts his mouth where hers was, takes a sip. Relishes, brushing through the glass body where her hands touched, the pearls that her neck graced, the blue panties that had clad her cunt and still embodied her ghost.

When you looked at the bigger picture it wasn’t the bullets that were dissonant. 

She’d intrigued him, he’d wanted rub off on her, too tunnel-visioned with her sweet pussy to grasp the concept that he hadn’t created the monster. It had always been there.

The fact that his blood still runs a bit too hot for her complicated things. But if he knows something by now is that the past is a living thing. You can’t shake it. You have to own it. And she owed him.

That settles it. He drives to the Paper Porcupine. Parks with a view to the windows and the inside. He’s piqued. And he won’t lie. He likes to watch her. Like to be hypnotized by the bound her breasts, the snake-like sway her hips. He could study that alone for hours. Write an essay on all her divine gifts. He contents himself with watching.

The place buzzes throughout the end of rush hour and she just flourishes with it. He follows the bounce of her golden head just as avidly. Watches her round up a set of wayward twins, conjuring lollies out of nowhere, like the shady Mary Poppins she is. Seeing her smile and laugh at this and that, that’s… new. He can’t say he knows her laugh, not like that. He doesn’t know her, not that ordinary part of her. He knows the deeper, murkier things. He knows that the line atop the bridge of her nose, deepens with worry. He knows the pitch of her moan when she’s close to climax. The hitch on her breath when she’s scared. He knows her core… the trigger under her skin. 

He scratches at his chest. It still bothers. He wonders when it won’t. Is it when he breaks her? Cause the altruistic route got him nowhere but back in her orbit.

It seems like it ain’t just him attracted to her majesty, she has to virtually shoo away the rest of the employees like a matriarchal queen bee. He knows it ain’t from the goodness of her heart, they don't. She cashes up as time ticks to closing hours and he gets antsy in the car. Even from the distance he spots the transformation. Chances are one could smell it on her. Ol’ Beth is gone. She's on something else now. He gets out as she runs the curtains on the other side of the store, pacing his gait to match hers. When she comes to flip the 'Open' sign, he’s leaning at the door, hands in his pockets. 

"Hey now."

Her face bleaches, abruptly washed of colour. And he nudges at the door, that little bell he's heard all afternoon bursting into jingles.

“No!” She pushes against the frame, trying to close the door on him but his foot is already jamming the gap.

“Chill, mama," he drawls.

“Yeah, right, because the last time you sneaked up on me I loved being kidnapped and threatened into murder.”

“I’m not here for any of that,” he assures, pouting at the offence.

“Well, you’re here for something. You always are.”

"Mm-hmm. Yeah, I hear there’s a new Chef in town. Came to check it out."

"Chef?" She has the audacity to pretend and think about it, to give him lip. "This is a gifts shop… I mean, we have candy but it isn't worth the trip you took."

He pulls one of her tens out of his pocket. Slams it flat against the window panel. “I’ll be the judge of that.”

She looks at it and back up at him, another lie already secreting on the tip of her silver tongue. He doesn’t give her the rope to try and wrangle him in. 

“I wanna see you cook, Elizabeth.” He pulls the other hand out. Metal bangs against the glass. “Show me.” 

She does. Takes him out back. Slides her head through a paint-speckled apron, tying it at the back while he pretends to get comfortable. For the next fifteen minutes or so he watches her assemble her mise en place. Something changes in the action. Like the draught in the room dropped a curtain and the show is about to begin. And there she is. The main star. The Chef. 

It's a show, alright. It’s her and the all pungent bouquet of chemicals. It’s a ballet. And she’s trained to flawlessness. She’s elegant and concise in her movements, the measurements indoctrinated into her senses. There’s a confidence fettered to it, like she could do it with her eyes closed, a hand tied behind her back.

The process itself is quite explanatory and when he doesn’t ask questions, it bothers her. The steely, uncertain looks she throws in his direction amuse him. She craves his praise, but what’s new, she still thinks she can have everything, he’s here to remind her that she won’t.

The only sound becomes the blender, mashing paper and water into a pulp. But he can feign the beat of her heart, ally it to the steady rise and fall of her chest, he knows that sweater, that rhythm, it jerked his cock back in the day, does the same now.

She pours the mulch into the deckle, brushes and presses it with the adroitness of a master. Looks at him with the clashing awkwardness of a novice.

“The puIp’s gotta dry now.” 

There’s a hankering hidden in her humdrum tone that makes him scowl. “Okay,” 

“Takes a while.” 

She throws a bone professing a flower. Trying to bid him like he's one of her worker bees. The duplicity slants into his lips, almost hacking up a grin. “I got time.”

He doesn’t stir his eyes from her. And she looks around already planning some other sordid escape. Points to the shelves at the end of the wall as if they were a Hail Mary. But doesn’t dare move, eyeing the gun by his side instead. “I think I still have some paper left. We could scram to printing.”

He cocks his head, now grinning like a wolf. “I wouldn’t want to miss a beat.”

She gives up. That pissy turnt of her nose tells him she’s not quite over it. And shit, he’ll do this all night if she has to. They don’t say another word and she gets wearied of the staring contest, moves to the inks. 

She knows her ingredients as well as she knows her tools. The printer comes with the wear and bad habits of a finicky dying man. She frolics her way around the mechanics, playing with levers and cranks until it comes to something akin to life. Pulls the paper out of the presser and feeds it into the machine.

He didn’t even notice the time fly. He doesn’t venture to understand the quantum physics behind it. It’s best not to try and apply logic where it isn’t wanted. 

Alas, the meal is ready and he brings the gun with him, ready to make or break her. She eyeballs it as if unsure of what critic she’s supposed to please. Chooses neither. Picks a different facet from her endless rainbow. Bosses up.

“So what do you want?” 

It's the first time all night that she rings true. So he takes his eyes off the perfectly presented platter, upfronts her with his intentions.

“I want your cookbook.”

“No.”

“No?” He amuses.

“This is mine. I’ll break it before I give it to you.”

 _Bold._ He laughs. He likes boldness. Bold makes reckless. 

“You doubt me? Didn't you say this was medieval? Well, guess what I did while you were sharpening your sword? I learned. I know your language now. Your traditions. Your beliefs. Which villages to tame and which bridges to burn. I've sweated it with you, I've built my own kingdom, why would I surrender it to you now?”

He flows like water up to her personal space and Beth stares him dead in the eye. He cocks the slide, her neck bobs with the spring, throat just as loaded as his gun.

"This again? How many times are you going to point a gun at me and not shoot?"

"Nah, I ain’t killing you,” he drones, using the front sight to brush away her bangs. _“I need you."_

The gesture is gentle but the aim is cruel, and she blinks, stunned for a second. He hands her the gun and she takes it in a trance. So akin to that doomed night, at his loft. 

"Yeah, that’s right. You don’t need me. So why don’t you burn the bridge, Elizabeth? Let’s end it. Right here, right now."

He reaches for the barrel, brings it up to his chest, muzzle to the left of his sternum. So analogous to the last time, under the rain.

"Not that easy when you ain't threatened and pissed, huh?" His head cocks and he smirks, that serrated blade slant of his, intended to cut her. 

"Oh, I am!" she snarls, propelling the pistol like a hatchet. "I'm sick and tired of building something so a man can come and try and kick it down."

"So c'mon then," he insists, tone deceptively light, gaze of tar hardening to asphalt over the icicle blue of hers. "Empty the clip."

Her hand quivers. Her lip hurls a trembling snarl, index twitching on the trigger. A beat passes. Feels more like an eternity under the barbed weapon she has for eyes. Even so, only a second for her finger to reel back and rest on the side. 

"What's wrong, Elizabeth?" he mocks, knowing exactly what’s wrong. He’s been there, right where she is. Looking at her lips the way she's looking at his.

Hers shudder right then in a stint of new found energy. Something black glazes her chink and for a second there he's sure she's going to do it. But she doesn't. The tops of her breasts begin to heave, her extended arm folds at the elbow in an increasingly erratic back and forth. Reminds him of a toy, agonizing to the last stretch of a dying battery.

He could end it there. Twist the gun on her. Make it even. Instead, he finds himself driving his pec into the muzzle even more.

"You need a little incentive?" he rubs in, bullying a step in her direction and... and she cracks. 

Her arm flumps as if suddenly cast in lead. A sob chokes in her throat and she pivots on him, finding harbour in the workbench, head low, arms spread like an anchor.

Are those ice caps she has for eyes possibly melting? For him? That’s cute. Tears would be nothing but salt to the wound, he knows cause she’s blade, honed and deadly... if he lets her slink close enough. 

"Get out," she husks, inhaling desperately. It's as if she’s battling an inner demon and not him. As if her breathing technique is all the weapon she has, the scent of acetone, the only ammunation she’s allowed. As if the gun doesn’t exist. 

She holds the power right in her hand. She could scream and throw a fit and riddle him with more holes than Swiss cheese, just as she’s done before. Instead, she begs. 

"Go… _please."_

He doesn't. 

He’s ought to punish her. Fuck her. Kiss her. Eschew her cursed existence, for once, for all. He knows he’ll only be able to tick the two top commandments off that list.

He reaches for the tie at her back, undoes it. She pants as the apron flumps ‘round her neck. And quicker than he can think, his arm laces her, willowy around the small of her waist. The barrel of his chest weights down on her back, his nose nudges at her nape, inhaling her deeply. 

God, he’s missed her. Her pillowy, buxom form. Her witty, venomous mouth.

His groin thrusts onto her rear. His lips drag through her skin. He cups her breast, fingers kneading around her areola. Her dainty hand, knuckle-white, gripping to the table’s edge. 

It’s so much like that wicked night, in the bathroom that there’s barely a thread remaining to his lucidity. And yet when he finds his way through her jeans and shoves his hand into her panties, it’s nothing quite like it. 

_It will never be the same._ That's what his heart drums as she seizes the chunk of his wrist, and wanes against his touch. 

_It can never be._ That’s what his head spins as his middle finger finds her threshold and pierces it.

Then he doesn’t think anymore. He can’t with her strained breath crooning so sinfully. It’s impossible with the hard length of his cock pulsating under two sets of fabric. He thirsts for her without the barriers. Wants her muggy and adjacent to his throbbing meat. 

She withers, mauling at his skin, shy of the attention of a second finger. One-handed, tries and shimmy the impossible way out of her tight jeans but fails. 

“I... I need—” 

_No._ He shoves his fingers deep within her, looting her breath away, hiking her onto her tippy toes. 

_No._ She's gotta shut the fuck up. She doesn’t _need._ She _wants._ She’s a gorger. She wants everything. A black hole, riveting in all things. Fuck the ramifications.

His fingers pretty much squelch out her, tracking moisture up to her belly, yanking, galled at the lone side of her jeans. She only has time to slip one leg free cause he’s hoisting her by the buttocks, pegging her hard, up against the workbench. 

She tugs at the apron, jammed between their apexes and throws it somewhere. He works at his belt buckle, plucks the row of buttons and digs his cock out. She gobbles up her breath as if she’s forgotten what he looked like. He lays his pipe atop the black cotton of her thong, the broad crown past her belly in an overt display of where it will butt her inside. Her hips buck just a smidge, her thighs close just a little and he knows she remembers exactly what it feels like. 

He does too. He remembers every vein of her marbly skin and every crease in her velvet interior. It’s a curse, not a gift. And whatever rages in his cock also does in his eyes, in his intention. He splays her, adjusting, making room for his hips between her thighs. Whatever happens next, he’ll make sure she won’t ever forget.

He brings the fingers that were inside her up to his mouth. Licks ‘em long enough for her tangy taste to dissolve the asphalt of his eyes back to a churning, molten tar. Lets it slaver onto the pads of his fingers and smears it over the broad of his cock. He hooks the side of her panties, baring her glossed-up pussy lips, just as peachy and ripe as he reminisces them.

His free hand clutches to his girth at the base, teasing the wet tip over her half-covered clit and down her folds, nudging at the narrow circumference of her entrance.

She hisses, pure ecstasy, as he coerces her cunt’s give with one vigorous thrust. And another. Then he waits, deep inside her, body just as tense as hers, puffing, fingers like staples keeping her panties away, regarding the stretch of her accommodating warmth. 

He wants to say something, howl at the moon like a beast. Wants to claim her, possess her. That's how good it is. Even if it’s just punishment. He says nothing. It’s better that way. It’s the only way. Because if he knows something is how to fuck her.

He slides his hand under her sweater and squeezes her tit, hard, pinching her pebbled nipple between lace, thumb and knuckle. His hips begin to move, rolling up as he sinks. 

Elizabeth moans, startled. Her fingers claw at the edges of the table, bedeviled. Her powerful thighs snap around his waist, the heels of her feet dig into his lower back, keening, demanding. 

And he indulges, baring his teeth, but he indulges. Fuck subtlety, fuck delicacy. He gains momentum, pounding her so roughly against the workbench that the hollow echo of impact shudders around him. So violently that the shit over the table rattles. So fucked up that she’s gonna have bruises, that he's gonna leave a mark. Isn’t that what he wanted? 

The ache between her legs condensates into something almost agonizing deep in his loins. Something has to give and rather sooner than later. And it’s him.

_Fuck._

Furious at himself and mad at her, he jerks back, torturous as it is to pull away. She blinks, so innocent, so guilt-free in the rapture that he grins hexed into swallowing her knife.

 _Fuck._

He’s moving before he can’t bring up to himself what an idiot he is. Binding her legs together and up in the air, the left still clad in her sneakers and dangling jeans. He hooks the elastic band of her panties and hikes them just enough so they won’t interfere. 

He beholds her like that for a second, contemplating her cunt again. The exposed roundness of her ass. The inflamed pussy lips jammed between inner thighs. The nub of her clit peeking between the chubby, holy trench. The glory of her creamed hole, pulsing, hungry for release.

A shrine means little at the gates of a temple. And he groans in painfull restraint, cock twitching, wet and heavy, like everything is between them. Not for long though. He strikes it across her exposed and overly stimulated pink kitty and swerves savagely into her heat.

He bucks into her, again and again, sheathing his full length, making sure the flat of his head grates that rugged spot within her while the v of his groin tends to her clit. 

He wasn’t ready. He wasn’t prepared for the wave that hit her and washed him in return, crushing barriers and erasing commandments in its path. But he was primed for her mouth. For the gaping softness of her bottom lip. The whet, sharp points of her little teeth. The breathless lap of her tongue.

He is glad that the kiss was quick and done with. Glad when her body gives and her legs droop like melted wax, rolling her onto the side and belly. He wasn’t in his right mind, for what came after it, not for the unsolicited tell in the deep haze of her blue orbs. 

Reluctant, he buries his head back on her nape. She is particularly sweet there, at the hairline, right next to her ear lobule. Somewhere else she is even sweeter... richer, toothsome. And he craves that piquancy, more than his own impending release.

He goes to his knees like the fool that he is. Spreads the ivory of her asscheeks for bounty. Swipes his nose like a credit card, knowing exactly how much she’d toll him. Mouths starved at her sticky, embossed folds. Hums and savours her with eyes shut. 

It's not enough. He takes her in with gargantuan mouthfuls. Slurps at her pussy like the thick, bottomless, milkshake it is. And she gives and gives and keeps on giving and fuck it... he doesn't care for the least if he gets brain freeze. 

He keeps lapping at her like a mad man. Tongue-fucking her sweet, sweet pussy. Squeezing and kneading at the rounds of her ass. And she eventually crumbles when he wedges his 5 o'clock shadow deep in there and plows through her clit like he's stuffing a golden Oreo. 

She pinches a scream within her, throws her head with renewed vitality. Arching to impossible, clamping to unthinkable. He almost has to ply her open, coerce them cheeks wide, so he can prod around her puckered asshole. She wails now, arm reaching behind, hand deployed like a claw, crashing against his skull, pushing him down but also further into her. 

It’s what he already knows, she wants everything. 

So he jabs her ass, tiny little pokes that rake a mewl out of her. Lands an open-handed smack that doubles her at the knees and quits her from pestering him. Shoves her against the table, pins her in place, not done until she’s undone, wasted, panting and gushing against his tongue. By then he’s so triggered that the rooms' flurrying draught could’ve detonated him, let alone the whiff of her pungent pussy. 

He’s almost dizzy, almost too weak to get back on his feet. It’s sheer will. It’s pure greed that urges him to coffin himself in her. Deep, slow stroke. He doesn’t have it in him to drill her like she really deserves right now, he doesn’t think she could’ve taken it either.

It takes just the minimum. Her cunt is hot and slick and oh-so snug that when his cock draws out of her it's fully daubed in cream. The poor thing heaves and swells, more than ready. And he growls, in pain, in pleasure, palms at her ass, right where he'd struck her, leveraging within her, bursting like a dying star. 

He loses his sight for a minute, dense from the combustion. He can't move there for a second, shook to the core. She does it for him, bounding her marble cheeks at him. Milking him out of every drop while he’s incapacitated, feeble against the might of her void. 

It’s the ailing that snaps him out of her. It’s the welted stripe at her lower back, put on display as she bends to hook on her panties. It’s the paper mulch dripping from the tumbled Vitamix, plopping wet onto the floor. It’s the silence after that. 

“This—” she breaks it timorous, tugging a resentful strand of gold behind her ear, still half-breathless and quiverish. “I’m not interested in a partnership.”

“I’m not offering one,” he snides, tucking his cock back into his pants, not in better shape.

“So it’s true then,” she cringes, half-way back in her jeans. He sees the grinding of her gears, how everything falls into place in her head. The pain when it downs on her. “It’s not that you don’t want to kill me. It’s that I’m spendable.” 

“I don’t recall you wanting it any other way,” he derides, reminiscent of a past unborn in her bedroom, not as forgotten as they’d like it to be.

“You just want to own me.”

“And you still want to be me,” he returns, pissed, hurt, fucked up. “You think you've learned all about kingdoms?” he grins now, all wolf. “That was just one chapter, ma, and you crashed your own crash course when you put three slugs in me. Wearing the crown and keeping the crown are very different things."

“I’m not going to be your patsy,” she warns, all flush, all fury. What a vision. What a dare.

“Oh, baby…” he mocks her, “Until you’re ready to lay in the dirt and stay dirty, if you ain’t my patsy you’ll end up being someone else's patsy. I’d stick with the devil you know.”

She looks away. Looks _for_ something with her fists balled to the sides, lips sticky and idle from the surplus of venom, ultimately settling on the gun. 

Part of him wishes she’d do it. The other part wishes he’d do it to her. Both of them know it would only be tantamount to more foreplay.

He finishes with the last button. Digs for his wallet in the back pocket. Slaps a C note on the workbench. Slides it in her direction. “Mad money... for the Plan B.” 

He grabs the gun by the barrel, dragging the grip by the wood like he’s scrapping a scab. She stares at him with icicles back for eyes. _Good._ They’re back on the same page, to the chapter where they should be. “I think we’re all out of surprises for a lifetime.”

He leaves. Leaves her there aching, sore, wrecked, somehow absolutely sure he shouldn’t quite count on that. No. Naming fears and owning them doesn't make them go away.


End file.
